1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a semiconductor circuit, and more particularly, to a differential signal generation circuit.
2. Related Art
Semiconductor memories use a variety of signals such as data signals, clock signals, and control signals for their operation in various electronic circuits.
A variety of signal transmission methods may be used to allow the semiconductor memories to transmit such signals to/from other circuitries. A differential signaling method, which transmits two signals having opposite phases and receives signals by detecting a difference in the voltages of the two signals, is widely used as a method for accurately transmitting signals.
A semiconductor circuit using such a differential signaling method may include a circuit configuration for generating differential signals having opposite phases using a single-phase signal.
FIG. 1 is a circuit diagram of a conventional differential signal generation circuit which may be used in a semiconductor memory apparatus. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional differential signal generation circuit 1 includes an inverter array.
The differential signal generation circuit 1 generates a first output signal OUT through a randomly selected inverter of the inverter array, and generates a second output signal OUTB having a phase opposite to that of the first output signal OUT through the immediately preceding inverter.
In a conventional differential signal generation circuit, however, since the number of inverters traversed by the first output signal OUT is different from the number of inverters traversed by the second output signal OUTB, a phase difference occurs due to a delay time difference and/or a process/voltage/temperature (PVT) variation, as shown in FIG. 2.